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Ranpo Edogawa has been waiting for this day all week.
Monday passed as slow as syrup drizzled over piping hot pancakes. Tuesday and Wednesday were twin eggs sizzling in a pan—close to the final result, nearly perfect, but still so much left to go. Thursday was like the scent of fresh, delicious bread that won’t be cool enough to eat for hours: appealing, exciting, inviting desperation for the meal to come quicker while still giving you something to anticipate in the moment.
Friday, however?
Friday was a full-course meal. Friday was the cream on top of the hot chocolate, the sweet popcorn served at the local movie theatre, the free samples the candy shop near her apartment hands out on special occasions.
Friday was going to be beautiful.
After all, Ranpo would be spending today with Poe. And nothing could tarnish that.
Ranpo Edogawa and Edgar Allen Poe had met about three months ago, seated next to each other in a creative writing class that was full of two kinds of people: pretentious, insufferable nerds who thought that feigned affinities for classic literature made them superior, and lazy, half-conscious coasters who thought that a class about books would be a quick ticket to an easy college credit.
Poe and Ranpo, however, were the exception to this rule.
It had started sometime in the first week of the semester, the routine they’d found themselves falling into. Ranpo would lean over her desk, long, rumpled black hair falling in her eyes as she scrawled out essay after essay—and Poe would pretend like she wasn’t intensely watching her seatmate. Like she wasn’t scanning every single word the shorter girl wrote down, wasn’t studying and staring and scrutinising the page like it was the most fascinating puzzle she had ever encountered.
In return for Poe’s attempts at casual nonchalance, Ranpo offered her the same courtesy—feigning ignorance whenever Poe copied down answers from her work or snuck glances at her out of whichever corner of her eye that her bangs weren’t currently covering. It was the least she could do—Ranpo was no stranger to admirers, nor was she unaccustomed to people envying her academic prowess and analytical mind. So she might as well let bygones be bygones, and just enjoy the attention of the only person in their class who was even remotely interesting.
One day, however, Ranpo had decided to ask. Call it curiosity, or intrigue, or an attempt at deduction through reasoning and evidence.
Either way, she wanted to know more. And there was only one way to do so.
On that particular day, the two girls were the last to leave the classroom, everyone else having already shuffled off to whatever lecture they had to suffer through next, and as Poe bent her head over the raccoon-shaped satchel she carried with her every day like a totem, Ranpo cleared her throat.
“You’re too smart to be copying me, you know.”
Poe looked up like a startled prey animal, eyes wide as saucers even behind the mess of her cocoa-coloured hair.
“I… I wasn’t–”
“I’m not mad at you,” Ranpo laughed, hand placed upon the desk as she leaned a little closer. “Really. I get it, you know. I’d probably copy me too. But I’ve seen the stuff you submitted for the college newsletter. You’re a great writer. Even without riding on my coattails.”
“Um,” Poe began, fiddling with the straps on her bag. “I mean, I wasn’t—I wasn’t actually copying you. Not that—not that you’re not smart, believe me. But that’s not what I was doing.”
“Oh.”
It was Ranpo’s turn to look confused now. She frowned, rubbing the back of her neck.
“What… what were you doing, then?”
“I was looking at you.”
The bluntness of Poe’s statement caught the black-haired girl off-guard, and she adjusted her glasses as if better vision would lead to a better understanding of the mind of the enigmatic Edgar Allen Poe.
“You were looking at me,” Ranpo repeated, blunt and slow. “Okay. Why?”
“You… you’re cute when you’re thinking.”
Is all Poe had said, so quiet and soft that Ranpo wasn’t sure she had even heard her correctly, and before she could ask Poe was snatching up her belongings and running out of the classroom like the shot of a cannon, spilling pens and papers all over the floor as she made her desperate escape.
They didn’t speak much about that conversation in the next class. Or the class after that. Or the class after that. But one day, Ranpo forgot a pen, and asked Poe if she could borrow one, and the conversations only continued from there.
Shy, sweet, tentative. Everything Ranpo had ever wanted, and everything Poe had ever feared.
For two geniuses, they sure were clueless about first love.
It was Ranpo’s roommate who had to break the news in the end. To diagnose Ranpo with the worst disease of all, a terminal, awful case of something so deadly and disastrous it was scarcely safe to even mention: a crush.
Akiko Yosano was a first-year med student, and had been friends with Ranpo ever since they met at a particularly awful party during fresher’s week and bonded over their mutual distaste for cheap beer and loud, meaningless conversations. Sharing a dorm together only strengthened their newly-forged bond—as loud as Ranpo could sometimes be, and as strict and serious as Yosano often got during finals week, the two of them wouldn’t have wanted to room with anybody else.
They’d been binging bad movies in their dorm on a particularly uneventful Saturday night when the topic of the cute nerd in Ranpo’s writing class was finally breached.
“Poe-san likes you, you know.”
Ranpo looked up from the film her and Yosano had been watching together, a low-budget horror movie only thrown on so Yosano can nitpick the medical accuracy and she can point out the copious amount of logical errors made by the protagonists, and turned to her with her own head cocked like a dog’s.
“Who?”
Rolling her eyes, Yosano reached for the TV remote and paused the fake blood and carnage on screen, before flicking her gaze back to Ranpo and giving her the same disapproving frown she always does when the writing student says something oblivious.
“Don’t be an idiot, Ranpo. It doesn’t suit you.”
She hugged her knees to her chest and leant her head on them, dark hair pulled back in low, messy twin tails as she regarded the girl next to her with a cool expectancy.
“Poe, as in Edgar Allen? Atrocious mullet, hopelessly obsessed with you, always carrying around that mangy little raccoon bag on her shoulder?”
Ranpo blinked at her, before breaking into laughter at the serious expression on her face.
“I’m just messing with you, Akiko. Of course I know who Poe-chan is.”
Yosano sighed, squeezing her eyes shut and taking a deep breath in, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation like a parent dealing with a particularly unruly child.
“You are insufferable, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
And she had. On multiple occasions.
“In that case, can I also assume you’re aware that Poe has a raging, embarrassing, pathetically desperate schoolgirl crush on you?”
Ranpo nearly chokes on the pocky she’d been cramming into her mouth.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Yosano raised an eyebrow.
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t.”
Ranpo protested, shoving another chocolate-coated stick down her throat. Crumbs sprayed over the duvet of Yosano’s bed, and she smacked Ranpo on the shoulder with an exaggerated glare as she got up, heading into the kitchen to grab some paper towels to clean up the mess.
As Yosano returned to wipe away the debris, she gave Ranpo another serious stare, sweeping the crumbs into a napkin and dropping it into the trash.
“I’m serious. You’re not totally clueless, Ranpo. Even you must’ve noticed the way Poe keeps looking at you.”
“Okay, and?”
A laugh bubbled up from the taller girl’s candy-stained lips.
“Plenty of people look at me like that. I’m a super-genius, Akiko. It happens. Poe-chan’s been staring at me since the school year began. It’s jealousy, that’s it… hardly romantic when all she can think about is surpassing me, I’m sure.”
Yosano stared at her with incredulity, hands on her hips. She almost wanted to laugh with her, astounded by the sheer audacity her friend possesses, but she reined in her hysteria and took a deep breath iinstead.
“First of all, when you talk like that, you sound like a prick. Second of all, when you talk like that, you sound like a prick. And lastly… do you really think Poe-san acts like that because she wants to be better than you?”
Blinking at her, Ranpo’s own brow furrowed in thought.
“Well, yeah. It almost makes me feel bad for her, you know?”
“Ranpo. The girl follows you around like a lost puppy, constantly seeks your approval and praise, and told you to your face that she was looking at you because you’re cute. And you think she’s only doing all this because she’s jealous?”
At last, Yosano laughed, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle the childish giggles bursting from her throat.
“Believe me, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
For perhaps the first time ever in her life, Edogawa Ranpo looked confused.
“Like what?”
With a pointed roll of her eyes, Yosano flicked the television off and turned back to face her friend.
“You two are always texting–”
“We’re in the same class, of course we need to message each other–”
“And you’re always talking about her–”
“Because we’re friends–”
“And she’s always touching you, or telling you how pretty you are, and you’re always blushing when she’s around–”
“That’s normal friend stuff–”
“And yet you don’t act like that with me.”
“Ew, gross! I could never.”
“Wow, thank you,” Yosano quipped dryly, flopping back against the couch cushions. “But you see what I mean, right? You and Poe have something special. Something you don’t have with the rest of your friends.”
“I guess,” Ranpo sulked, folding her arms with reluctant semi-agreement. She hates being wrong. “But it’s not like I’m in love with her or anything. She’s just… Poe.”
“And she doesn’t need to be anything more. But, still. She likes you, Ranpo. Try letting yourself have nice things every once in a while.”
Yosano’s words were soft and kind, and Ranpo felt almost startled by how gently her friend was speaking to her—their usual love language of traded barbs and snarky, playful teasing was completely absent from Yosano’s tone. For once.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Ranpo responded defensively, not one to let her guard down as she gestured to the snacks piled up around her and the fluffy pajamas she was decked out in.
“I always let myself have nice things. I love nice things. That’s my middle name. Ranpo ‘Nice Things’ Edogawa.”
“I don’t mean like that,” Yosano chided. “I mean that you always assume someone has ulterior motives with you. That they only like you because you’re smart, or because you’re funny, or because they’re jealous of you.”
She sighed, shaking her head.
“There are more things to like about you than just your intelligence, you know.”
Ranpo had never thought about that before. Had never wanted to. As far as she was concerned, her greatest strength was her mind and what it could do. So she made sure she used it, because it came to her so naturally that it made no sense to try any harder than she had to. Throughout life, she had coasted on brains alone—any other passion fell to the wayside, swallowed up by ego and selfish desire for recognition and approval. She wanted to be the best. She knew she was the best. Everyone else knew she was the best. And as such, that made friendship a very hard thing to come by—let alone romance. Her prowess and her talent had made her intimidating, yes, but it had also made her susceptible to being used—to having people chew her up and spit her out when they were done.
Until Yosano, she wasn’t sure she’d ever had a real friend.
Until Poe, she didn’t know if anyone’s love—or whatever the spark between them might be—had ever come without conditions, had ever been given to her for free without a price tag.
And maybe she didn’t trust Poe just yet. Perhaps she didn’t believe that this budding relationship would swan-dive into jealousy and obsession, that the shy, sweet girl who shared her pencils and complimented her hats every morning would ever truly want something from Edogawa Ranpo that wasn’t a service or a promise.
But as she sat there, looking at the expectant, self-satisfied face of her best friend, and thinking about the way Poe always smiled at her like she hung the moon and polished the stars… Ranpo was willing to try. Just once.
She picked up her phone, ignoring the cheers and whoops of excitement from a decidedly tipsy Yosano, and scrolled through her contacts until she found Poe’s name.
Ranpo (9:43pm): poeeeeeeeeee?
Poe 🦝 (9:43pm): Yes, Ranpo? 🙂
Ranpo (9:45pm): ew. don’t send me that emoji.
Poe (9:45pm): Alright. What would you prefer?
Ranpo (9:45pm): i really don’t care but i need to talk to you
Poe 🦝 (9:45pm): What’s the matter?
Ranpo (9:46pm): do you want to come over this week
Poe 🦝(9:46pm): As in, to study?
“God, you’re both as clueless as each other.” Yosano scoffed from where she was perched, looking over Ranpo’s shoulder.
Ranpo ignored her, typing back with desperate, sugar-fuelled speed.
Ranpo (9:47pm): sure… to study.
Poe 🦝 (9:47pm): O…kay 😂. Is Friday alright? I have a lot of commitments this week.
“Do you think she’s got commitments with other girls?”
Ranpo asked Yosano with an uncharacteristic degree of concern.
“If she does, she’s fucking stupid.”
Yosano mutters, leaning back against the bed.
Poe 🦝 (9:49pm): Ranpo? Are you there?
Ranpo (9:49pm): yes, i’m here friday is great see you then
Poe 🦝 (9:49pm): Can’t wait! ❤️
Ranpo stared at that message until her eyes began to burn, gaze scanning over the little red emoticon at the end of Poe’s text as if it really was the other girl’s actual heart in front of her, laid out bare for her to see.
It was small, yes. But, to someone like Ranpo?
It was everything.
Their Friday ‘study session’ starts at 7:00pm.
Poe is there at 6:45pm.
When Ranpo opens the door, Poe is standing in front of her with an armful of various candies and sweets, a soft, dopey smile gracing her apple-red cheeks.
“I heard it’s customary to… to bring gifts. On these kinds of occasions.”
Ranpo blinks.
“On study sessions?”
“Yes,” Poe replies, with a slight edge to her tone that suggests she knows as well as Ranpo does that this night is anything but. “On study sessions.”
Ranpo blinks again.
“Right. Do you want help carrying all that?”
“No, it’s oka–” Poe’s statement is swiftly cut off by the sound of assorted sweet treats crashing to the floor, and her face visibly reddens even further—if that’s possible. “Actually, yes. Yes, please.”
Ranpo bends down to scoop the candies into her hands at the same time as Poe, and their fingers brush for a moment while reaching for the same pack of strawberry laces.
The warmth of Poe’s hands is like coming home to a lit fireplace after a long day of work, cosy and comfortable and tender in all the ways that can soothe any ache and heal any wound, and Ranpo allows her touch to linger just for a second before they both pull away and stand up, carrying the generous gifts over towards the desk.
“I didn’t know what to get—I didn’t know what you liked—so I just got everything.”
Ranpo shrugs, still half distracted. Still thinking about how her and Poe’s fingers slotted together like jigsaw pieces falling into place.
“I like everything.” She responds casually.
Forcing herself to swallow down the lump of desire and shame and want in her throat, she opens her hastily scrawled notes and nods at Poe.
“Well, this play isn’t going to analyse itself. Shall we?”
Poe nods. A bashful smile graces her marshmallow-pink lips.
“I think we shall.”
Ranpo takes a seat on the bed. Poe perches upon the desk. They crane their necks over the words on the page, and the studying begins.
It’s about an hour before either of them actually speak a word that isn’t somehow related to the works of long-dead, half-famous Japanese playwrights.
“It’s.. it’s a little cold in here.”
Poe murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself with a little shiver.
Ranpo could die from how cute she is.
“Uh… yeah. It is, actually,”
Ranpo stands up, moving over to her closet.
“Yosano’s been onto the RA for weeks about it. Our thermostat’s broken, you see. And nobody around here seems to be willing to get off of their asses and fix it. So, we freeze.”
She tugs a large, hazelnut-brown cable knit sweater out of the wardrobe with a triumphant aha!, walking back over to where Poe is still seated on the desk.
“Here. So you don’t freeze. We can’t have that.”
Poe looks up at her—for once, at least while standing, Ranpo is the tall one—and fiddles with the hem of her The Cure t-shirt.
“Are you… are you sure? I don’t want to steal your sweater or anything.”
“I’ve got tons more, Poe. It’s fine,” Ranpo reassures the girl in front of her. “Besides, you’re not stealing it. I’m giving it to you.”
“Oh… okay then, if you’re sure,” Poe smiles. “Thank you very much.”
Poe tugs the sweater on over her head, and even though it’s a few inches too short on her, it’s plenty big enough, nearly swamping her thinner frame.
If Poe shivering was cute to Ranpo, then Poe actually wearing Ranpo’s clothes is downright adorable.
Ranpo grins in spite of herself, averting her gaze before she does something stupid.
“Suits you.”
Poe shakes her head, a matching smile gracing her own angular face.
“I’m sure you’d wear it better.”
A moment passes, and then Poe crosses over from the desk to the bed and sits down next to Ranpo—not close enough that they’re touching, but close enough that their legs just ghost past each other, the air between the skin full of electric charge.
“So we can talk better, and I don’t have to raise my voice or anything.”
Poe explains.
But she’s staring at Ranpo’s lips like they’re made of red-velvet cupcakes, and her hands are almost shaking with the effort it’s taking not to reach out and touch them.
“Um… is your roommate not in tonight?”
Poe asks suddenly, lovesick expression schooling itself into one of quick concern.
“Akiko?”
Ranpo queries, furrowing her brow in confusion.
“Um… no? She’s out. Why do you ask?”
“No—no reason,” Poe stutters nervously. “I just… I just thought she might be in, that’s all.”
“And that’s because…?”
“Well, you guys are…”
There’s practically steam coming out of Poe’s ears at this point.
“We’re what?”
“Like… you’re together. An item. Going steady.”
A beat.
Ranpo dissolves into laughter, sides aching with how hard she’s hooting and hollering in gleeful amusement. The whole while, Poe just watches her with those wide, owlish brown eyes—and every time Ranpo looks over at the taller girl’s innocent, bewildered expression, she breaks out laughing all over again.
It’s a few minutes before she finally speaks, voice strained and hoarse.
“First of all,” Ranpo begins, wiping away tears of mirth from her eyes. “Nobody has used the words going steady since like, the 1960s. Second of all—God, no. I am not dating Akiko Yosano. We’re friends. That’s all.”
Poe swallows, a flash of relief splitting her concerned frown into a tentative, hopeful smile.
“So… are you dating anyone?”
Ranpo’s stomach somersaults.
“Nah. No, I’m not dating anybody. Guess I just haven’t met the right girl.”
She flashes Poe a cheesy smile, one that she hopes comes across as self-aware and not self-centered.
Unfortunately, the delicate feelings of Edgar Allen Poe often cause the brunette to take things to heart.
“Oh… oh, right. Well that’s fine then, I was just asking.”
“Just asking?”
A knowing smile tugs at the corners of Ranpo’s mouth, and she raises an eyebrow at Poe’s scrunched up face.
“You’re cute when you’re thinking.”
The same words Poe first spoke to her in English class, all those weeks ago, now carrying a context as new as spring, yet with all the familiarity of old, comfortable sweaters and piles of sweet snacks shared with almost-more-than-friends.
A second later, the two women are crashing their lips onto each other with all the force of ocean waves.
It’s not a violent kiss, nor is it a passionate one.
It’s… sweet. Like gifted candy and girls with cocoa-coloured bangs.
Poe’s lips are as warm and soft as freshly baked cookies, pliant and soft as they brush against Ranpo’s trembling mouth. Neither of them know who initiated this kiss. But both of them know that they don’t want it to end. When Ranpo parts her lips to allow Poe’s tongue entry, she swears she can hear the other girl squeak with excitement, like one of the raccoons she obsesses over so heavily. Both of them taste like baked goods and sugar, heavenly bliss filling their mouth with every brush of their lips and flick of their tongues—and as Poe winds her long fingers into the mess of black hair crowning Ranpo’s too-full head, the latter breathes in the taller girl with an undeniable greed.
Like Ranpo Edogawa wants Edgar Allen Poe all to herself now, always and forever.
And from the way Poe is carding her fingers through Ranpo’s licorice locks, from the way she trails her lips down to kiss at the soft round line of Ranpo’s jaw, it’s clear even to those who aren’t masters of deduction and reasoning that the other girl feels exactly the same way.
“This is… nice.”
Poe breaks the kiss to take in a gulp of air, looking down at Ranpo with sparkling eyes, cola-coloured irises glowing amber in the fading summer sunlight that filters through the window.
“…Yeah. It is.”
They share a look—a shy, bashful, look—and Ranpo feels her chest tighten ever so slightly as she reaches up to trace a finger across the pale ridge of Poe’s cheekbone.
“You are so very beautiful, you know. Especially like this. You… you should have more confidence in yourself.”
A pink flush paints Poe’s cheeks the colour of cotton candy, but she doesn’t break eye contact for once.
“I think I’ve liked you since our first class together.”
“You know, I’d always had a feeling–”
“Hush, you.”
But Poe is laughing, and her hand comes up to cup Ranpo’s as it rests against her blushing skin.
“Well, who can blame me, you know? You are… definitely charming. And pretty. And funny, and sweet, and–”
Ranpo swiftly cuts off Poe’s gushing praise with another kiss, winding her arms up and around the taller girl’s neck as she smiles against her lips.
It’s new for both of them, this kind of freely given tender affection—Poe has never been the best at social situations and the intricacies of romance, and Ranpo has never considered the possibility that someone might ever look at her and envision that kind of pure, untainted intimacy.
But as new as it is, it’s also refreshing. Exciting. True. And neither Poe nor Ranpo want to let go of this feeling just yet, not if they can help it.
So they stay locked in that gentle, loving embrace until the sun bleeds out of the sky and the night fills it with ink-black darkness, until the streets outside the window empty themselves of strangers and students, until the two girls fall asleep squished up on Ranpo’s twin-sized bed, notes from earlier’s flimsy excuse of a ‘study session’ forgotten on the desk beside them.
Tomorrow, when they’re thinking clearer, they can talk about this. Talk about whether they’d like to do this again (yes), whether they were both sure that they’d like to take their friendship a step further (yes), whether Ranpo was sure that she liked the kiss and did Poe’s breath taste bad and had she used too much tongue (yes, no, no).
But tonight, they’re just Poe and Ranpo, Ranpo and Poe. That’s all they are, and that’s all they need to be.
When Yosano stumbles home from wherever she’s been crashing at 2am and spots the two lovebirds passed out on the bed, she’ll tuck a blanket over them haphazardly and smile, before switching off the lights and crossing over to her own neatly-made bed.
Because Ranpo Edogawa deserves nice things. A soft blanket, a gesture of care, a kiss from a bookish girl who tastes like caramel and smells like old parchment, kind words from a friend who knows her better than she knows herself.
Ranpo Edogawa deserves to be loved for who she is, not what she can do or who she can be.
And as her sleeping face curves into a subconscious smile, as she nestles herself further into the crook of Poe’s freckled neck and buries her face in the silk-smooth, warm skin, well… she might have found that kind of love after all.
Which is something even she could never have predicted.